The progressive brand is being burnt to the ground by Obama, this Congress and apologists for both. Progressives have become the sort of people who believe in health care reform that isn’t, highlighted by a public option which is so non-robust it will cost more than equivalent private coverage. Watching progressives scurry to take credit for a disaster has been extremely enlightening. Lemmings over a cliff thinking the promised land is at the bottom.
Mandos
You are writing them from the hothouse of a tiny corner of the blogosphere that has been yelling criticism about it, and you are doing so from the streets of Toronto where you have have a sane health care system.
Are you sure you are not suffering from some amount of observation bias? My conversations with real-life middle-class non-blogging Americans on this issue, insofar as this issue has ever come up, has been to some extent positive about this effort as a good start, but not a lot of actual passion on the matter.
Of course, most of the people I talk to in real life are Democrats with large-organization group health insurance so naturally I too suffer from that kind of bias. But I think it’s somewhat less of a bias than yours in that it is at least representative of a larger population that Obama-disgruntled Internet leftists! In real life, the word “progressive” hardly comes up anyway.
The Raven
Kraw… Who are you thinking of, in particular?
tjfxh
“Liberal” and “progressive” are often equated, perhaps because now that “liberal” is dirty word, many liberals have decided to call themselves progressives. I think there is more significant distinction, however. “Liberal” has traditionally been applied to the establishment. Traditionally, progressive movements have been populist, now called “grassroots,” or “net roots.”
From what I can tell, it’s pretty much only the progressive activists that are voicing outrage over healthcare. The majority of the public is not very well informed of the issues, let alone the details. Even the opposition hasn’t been attacking particular issues that much. The opposition is characterizing the health care legislation moving forward and a big government takeover of health, and they would be doing that regardless of what the bill might look like, because they oppose any bill at all.
It seems to me that the public prefers something to nothing, so there will be a bill. Then the public will pass judgment later on cost relative to results. So it is important to get a bill that at least does no harm. If it doesn’t do harm, like impose a costly mandate, it will be a net plus. I don’t think that most of the public expects more than a start, and they are most concerned about limiting the power of insurance companies to screw them. If that’s all it does and doesn’t do any harm, it will be a success.
Yeah, it’s maddening and Obama might have been able to do better, but remember, the bill hasn’t passed yet, and it could still blow up completely or be delayed indefinitely. There are some people now holding power who are going to be driving a hard bargain for their votes, and there are still a lot of amendments to be offered.
Ian Welsh
Mandos,
CNN 13th-15th had the public opposed to this bill 49-46. 10% of the public thinks the bill is not liberal enough, 34% says it is too liberal.
On their poll of whether to have a public system of health care, or keep the private system, last year, with no prompting, the public said private by a bare plurality, 49-41. This year? 61-32 said keep the private system.
Much more leadership like that, and well, we’re fucked.
Moreover, my predictions are generally based on my analysis of what the outcomes of policy will be. If I’m wrong about the outcome of health care reform if enacted and wrong about what’s going to happen in the economy, then I’ll be wrong about the outcome for the progressive brand. If I’m right, then I’ll be right about the brand.
This is irrespective of whether I’m in Toronto or not, just as it irrespective of what you hear from comfortable people in a DC suburb.
And I am well aware of what the rest of the progressive blogosphere is doing. I am not limited to my corner of the blogosphere, I still read with and talk to the part that is pushing the bill. All of my paying customers are, and have been for a decade now, in the US. In some respects I spend more time talking to and corresponding with Americans than I do with Canadians.’
As close to anything I can, I guarantee that the progressive/left wing brand is going to be trashed by this Congress and administration. Because their policies are going to be seen as failures and left wing. Why? Because people don’t tolerate high unemployment for years without getting really, really pissy at whoever is in power and because health care costs are going to continue to rise faster than pay or inflation.
Ian Welsh
Raven,
oh FDL for one. The whole “public option” pushing movement is ridiculous (but it soaks up a lot of money and energy, so it serves a useful purpose for some people). The public option has been watered down so far that anyone still arguing that it will effect costs or is “robust” is, at best, fooling themselves. At worst, well… If a robust public option was what their bottom line really was, they would be in opposition at this point.
Mandos
So, how do you think Correct Policy would have gone over, then?
Furthermore, “progressive” is not a word used on the streets, AFAICT. I don’t hear it on the radio (right-wing radio talks about “liberals”), and I don’t hear it even from non-bloggy (D) activists.
You are right about the outcome of the reform being the pivotal issue. I have few doubts about its general inadequacy. Once again, the key is what happens after, and how people react to that. My belief is that it has a chance to “open the floodgate”, as it were, to the *idea* of tinkering with the system at all, something which has almost completely been interdicted for decades now. It has a chance to do the opposite too, but doing nothing and hoping for the Correct Policy pony in a world in which malfeasant stakeholders can pull the plug on a politicians career quite easily has the same chance of a bad outcome.
selise
i’m already there. please don’t call me a progressive.
jeeze, i thought progressives were supposed to be the people who at least tried to propose and support policies that would work.
sure. haven’t you heard? next on the agenda is to get rid of the filibuster so that obamaco has an easier time of attacking social security and medicare.
if obamaco telegraphing “entitlement reform” isn’t enough of a clue, just take a look at the house healthcare bill. per cms report, medicare funding is cut (and not all of it is the good stuff like the subsidies to private insurance via medicare advantage).
The Raven
Oh, I see. Is the public even aware enough of progressives to blame them? It seems to me at least as likely that the insurance industry and conservatives, rather than the progressives, and, especially, Obama, will take the hit.
vastleft
“Follow the money” has proven a good way to solve a political mystery.
In our attention economy, we should (also) follow the meme.
How did “public option” become the One True Rallying Point for progressive elites? It’s simply too vague — and it quickly became too blatantly a bait-and-switch relative to Hacker’s vaunted plan — for even a moderately discerning person to think it had much merit.
Yet the top bloggers and biggest activist groups committed themselves to promoting and defending it — simultaneously, wholeheartedly, and resolutely. They wouldn’t answer the most obvious of questions (like how many people would have access to it, and what the yardsticks were for the oft-repeated notion that it should and would be “strong” and “robust”). Nor would they write about the most exciting progressive actions on health-care reform, like doctors, nurses, and everyday citizens getting themselves arrested to promote single-payer.
How does something like this happen?
The only theory that adds up (and for which I have received corroboration from sources I must keep anonymous) is that:
1. Insider listservs act as a Star Chamber for policy.
2. The dynamics are such that a small number of especially adamant, especially high-status bloggers can galvanize opinion — which quickly solidifies into virtual commandments, after which dissent either inside or outside the group is, shall we say, frowned upon.
3. Some of the influential listservs include both top bloggers and administration staffers. Bloggers, especially ones who crave ongoing and expanded access to insider circles, have powerful incentives to support administration agendas (or to push back only ever-so-lightly). The footsie between them isn’t incidental; it’s now been systematized.
4. Top bloggers and activists who are more idealistic, who aren’t so inclined to toe the line on administration policies, are thus indirectly co-opted because they are disinclined to question the vision and integrity of their peers, nor to recognize and drop a dime on the fundamentally non-transparent system they joined for reasons that may have been wholly altruistic.
If this is a wacky conspiracy theory, then can someone please explain how else it is that elite progressive opinion coalesces into such stultifying orthodoxies that inhibit real progressive reform?
If it’s not, who will join me in saying “Mr. Bowers and Ms. Hamsher, tear down this Star Chamber!”?
lambert strether
I think there’s a typo in the lead, which reads:
but should read:
The “air quotes” since nobody has been able to explain, or even see fit to explain, the direction in which progress is being made (other than right down the cr@pper, as Ian points out).
Speaking of trashing the brand….
Ian Welsh
Well then Mandos “liberal or left wing”, whatever. I think if Obama had rammed through Correct Policy in the first couple months when he had the mandate to do so and if that policy had worked, he’d be fine. The way politics works in the US is that you put through your program, take hits and see your approval drop, but by year 3 or 4 it starts to take effect and people are happy. Obama’s approval ratings aren’t that bad for where he is in his mandate, BUT because he didn’t put through Correct Policy (ie., working policy) he’s not going to get the bounce he and Democrats need.
Ian Welsh
The listservs are less important than one might think. Follow the money (or the business model, which isn’t primarily about access, actually) is the operative commandment.
tjfxh
Ian: “I think if Obama had rammed through Correct Policy in the first couple months when he had the mandate to do so and if that policy had worked, he’d be fine.”
Right. And that’s why Krugman in the mainstream and a lot of the ‘roots were concerned about Obama’s emphasis on “bipartisanship,” especially when everyone with a half a brain could see that there isn’t a bipartisan bone of the rotten body of the GOP, which is totally devoted to political advantage regardless of the cost to the country.
Obama had already announced what he was going to do for progressives in the campaign — nothing. Many progressives just weren’t listening. I said from the get-go that he would be just about the worst candidate to nominate as far as progressives are concerned.
vastleft
Ian, I have no innate attraction to the listerv-centric theory, so I’m happy to replace it with something that fits better.
So far it adds up to me because:
1. I have received corroboration of it (though your down-ranking of its importance does remind me to keep the door open to other theories)
2. It explains how bad or inferior (from a liberal perspective) agendas not just win the day, but win it so pervasively — even among those one doesn’t reasonably expect have corrupted motives.
Can you suggest an alternate theory for how “public option” blazed such a fast and scorching path through the entire lefty elite? How did bloggers who really do seem to strive for integrity not only become apologists and/or cheerleaders for it, but they fell into line in not giving any oxygen to single-payer activism.
It’s all too fast and complete and unbending — and for a policy agenda like “public option,” too stupid and illiberal — for it to be mere copycat behavior.
I don’t doubt that some folks do it for the money and the influence. The dynamics as I laid them out show how a few people, perhaps motivated by money and influence (or merely playing too much footsie with administration insiders) can spoil the whole bunch. Those career-climbing few don’t necessarily have to pick their memes via listservs, but how else do those memes get so quickly and relentless propagated and so unyieldingly defended?
If there’s a better model for explaining the lockstep conformity — even among the best of them — on worthless “progressive” policy, please do map it out for us.
Mandos
But that was the dilemma back then. A few people believed that the Democratic party could nominate a floral arrangement or a tub of yogurt for President and he/she/it/product would automatically win in the wake of Bush. But for many others, it wasn’t obviously clear, and there was a huge emphasis during the campaign on making absolutely sure that McCain wouldn’t be able to pull out a narrow victory, something that would have been a little bit more likely had either of the other “big” candidates been chosen (that being Edwards—which we know now would have been a Bill repeat re philandering—and Hillary, who would have been susceptible to October surprises). It wasn’t obviously clear that McCain was a “shoe-out” because Bush should have been kicked out in 04 and there was no reason why Gore shouldn’t have won in 00…
In any case, considering the fact that aside from Bushian mismanagement, the USA has been on roughly the same trajectory since 1980, none of this should exactly be surprising.
tjfxh
Paul Rosenberg has a post over at OpenLeft about Naomi Klein on brand Obama.
Naomi Klein nails brand “Obama”
vastleft
Typo…
I, of course, mean: “for a policy agenda like ‘public option,’ too stupid…”
To err is human… so edit mode, please?
Mandos
Then what you’re effectively saying is that the Democrats were screwed either way in 2010, and it was always a question of 2012.
I always believed that the Democrats would lose seats in 2010 myself, but as I said before, I would still hold back on saying it is definitely going to be a rout in 2010 even under the current trajectory.
As for 2012, if I’m hedging on 2010, then obviously I think it’s too early to say anything. But the Democrats are counting on the Republicans nominating a candidate who is either obviously crazy or indistinguishable from the worst Obama has to offer. Clearly this unwise. But if Americans would vote for such a candidate, I would suggest a deeper problem…
As for the “liberal or left wing” brand, you think that there *is* such a brand in the USA that can be trashed more than it has? I only get exposed to TV news 2-3 times a week as I’m going about my usual business, but a few minutes of CNN suggests that the only viable brand that is getting trashed is the Democratic one—the liberal brand has been dead since the 80s and the left-wing brand has been dead since the Red Scare.
What you are predicting, of course, is an ongoing calamity of global immiseration. Because if Correct Policy cannot eventually follow on Incorrect Policy, and we cannot get Correct Policy first thing, then what we really need to do is just to get off this planet period.
The Raven
Is Obama identified by the public as a “progressive?” Hmmm.
Ian Welsh
How much they were screwed in 2010 was always in question. If the unemployment rate was 2% lower than it would be they would be less screwed.
The ONLY recentish president who didn’t take losses in year 2 was FDR. The only one. But how many you lose is a big deal. Ask Clinton about that.
Mandos
Not at all a side note: one of the reasons why I keep going back to Brad DeLong’s site is that he (as a student of Summers and supporter of Geithner and Bernanke) most clearly and openly reveals the “Does not compute” tone-deafness of our policy elite. It’s a real window into the strange alternate universe in which the policy elite lives, and I can’t look away—partly because it really is so instructive. A couple of weeks ago, he asked the question about why good macro policy (bailouts) were not being given the correct form of criticism, selon lui—that it was actually not aggressive enough.
And he was given an earful in comments, including by me.
But the punch line is, he has posted a pretty much identical complaint just in the last day or so, this time putting more emphasis on the stimulus. Most of his commenters agree that the stimulus was too small—but that it’s not surprising that macro policy is unpopular given the bailouts. So he’s effectively asked the same question, because he didn’t like the answer the last time around, and he’s being given the same answer. This is after several posts defending Geithner and Bernanke, who are both apparently quite popular among mainstream macroeconomists.
I guess he’ll keep asking the question until he doesn’t get an answer that involves acknowledging that the unpopularity might have an actual intelligent basis…
But it suggests to me that the people who rule us actually often believe what they’re selling.
vastleft
Ian, to reframe my questions to fit into your business-model model:
* How does it happen that supporting a dubious policy like “public option” becomes a necessity for top bloggers’ business success?
To break it down further:
* How did “public option,” specifically, gain that kind of pull? If you don’t know for sure, what’s your educated guess?
* How does it become clear to bloggers that they have to fall in line with a particular agenda?
* How, specifically, does it cost them when they don’t?
Thanks for any insight you can provide!
Ian Welsh
More perhaps later. Just one more point for now: don’t assume most bloggers are any good at policy. Of major a-list progbloggers the only one whose policy judgment I’d trust at all is Atrios’s, but he never bothers to really explain what he’s saying.
The Raven
Mandos, for some reason, otherwise sane and rational economists (including Krugman) like Summers. From my viewpoint he looks like a privileged male version of Sarah Palin. He must be absolutely charming.
Ian Welsh
I know people who know Summers. I’m told he’s absolutely brilliant and he uses his intelligence as a bludgeon. People are scared to challenge him (and people who would be willing, like Volcker, have been kept out of the room.)
But people get too caught up on raw general intelligence (what’s measured by IQ). It’s possible to be genius level and have horrible judgment, and Summers is one of those people.
Being really smart means never having to admit you’re wrong, because you can always think of reasons why you’re right. It’s something all smart people have to guard against. Likewise, being really smart means you can make an ideology work on theory which doesn’t work in practice.
Mandos
That’s an interesting quiz/Rohrschach test you got there, vastleft.
Lots of reasons, but here’s my biggest: Most people watch TV news, and on TV news, a Canadian-style health care system is like a Soviet-style health care system. So most of the readership is already pre-convinced that a single-payer health care system is unattainable. If the readership has already been convinced, most blogs are going to follow that.
See above. Also, it’s because it still contains the possibility of keeping the existing system. The existing system is not as unpopular as people make it out to be, so selling a system where you can keep YOUR corporate health care plan and NOT pay for someone else’s health care is very easy.
Unless they’re academic/casual bloggers, it has to do with the composition of the target readership. Most Democrats-off-the-internet are still BO boosters, as far as I can tell. If you read Daily Kos, especially after the generations of purges, you’ll see that there’s a massive and coherent readership that is still boosting BO.
Loss of readership, relegation to fringe/niche blog status.
I didn’t say you’d like my answers…
Mandos
I know economists and financial industry people in real life, including people who work for regulatory bodies. These are all smart people. It’s very easy to get them on board for more intelligent regulation, but their brains shut off when you start connecting regulatory policy to politics. It’s not just their own interests—some of them would have if anything even more powerful and secure jobs in the medium term if we got serious about reform—it’s that there’s a whole education and mentality that militates so strongly against it that it, well, does not compute. Literally.
Ian Welsh
Mandos is not entirely correct, but he has something. Since I actually watched figures at a couple major blogs pretty obsessively, I can say for a fact that all a-list blogs don’t have to fall in line with Obama to keep or grow their audience. I can also say for a fact that supporting the public option was not necessary for the mid a-list. Now, DKos is its own little universe, for reasons which should be familiar to anyone who understands that the phrase “lowest common denominator”.
However, there is a great deal of perception, not always backed by fact, in the a-list, that you can’t get too far ahead of the audience. Problem is that a-listers don’t always know where the audience is, and often wait till its moved, then run out ahead of it. (Not just a-listers, this is a pretty universal phenomenon.)
It is also a fact that it took work to convince progressive blog readers to support the public option over single payer, which is what progblogs have been pushing for years. If major prog bloggers had come out for single payer and not for the public option, readers would have followed them. Prog bloggers, however, did not believe that single payer stood a chance, because Obama and key Senators were dead set against it, so they pre-compromised. I don’t think that was a good choice, but there are those (like Mandos) who think that it was. Problem is, once they compromised, they kept compromising, because they never sat down and said “this is what we need in a public option to support it”. It became, not a “robust” public option, but “any” public option.
And I suspect, for many, guaranteed issue and no recissions were the real bottom lines. They’d never admit it, but it’s the way they act.
However, there are also institutional constraints that matter. Audience is not that important beyond a certain threshold because it does not translate into revenue at a particularly good rate. This is a fact. Advertising revenues are not what support many of the key activist a-list blogs.
Not even close.
Mandos
That’s not quite correct. I don’t actually think it mattered much whether they pre-compromised or not, because aside from maybe dKos I don’t think that they have a lot of “weight” in terms of political machination (and you’re right that dKos’ situation is special—but its success should tell you something). The best role for blogs IMO is meme-generation, and the time it takes for a meme to become conventional wisdom is longer than a two-year political cycle.
That’s separate from whether I think that any bill that looks like reform should pass, because as I said above, the biggest problem is getting any movement at all, not merely getting good movement.
S Brennan
You are writing them from the hothouse of a tiny corner of the blogosphere – Mandos
Uhm…I’m not sure Democrats are dumb as you imply.
“Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will “definitely not vote” in 2010 than are Republicans.”
http://www.correntewire.com/they_have_no_place_go
The Raven
“I know people who know Summers. I’m told he’s absolutely brilliant and he uses his intelligence as a bludgeon. People are scared to challenge him (and people who would be willing, like Volcker, have been kept out of the room.)”
But why don’t his peers challenge him once he leaves the room? Delong, as Mandos points out, is deferential to power. But Krugman? The biggest challenge Summers has faced–and lost–was from women who were angry at his sexism. Why aren’t there more challenges?
Carolyn Kay
What’s happening is a continuation of the trashing of any idea, concept, or policy not approved by the John Birch Society. At first, it was enough to destroy the word “liberal”. Then, anyone who didn’t toe the right-wing line was a terrorist. We’re now in the phase where people’s views can be changed (such as the health care proposals) by calling the ideas socialist or communist.
Those of us who believe ordinary people deserve a break in the battle against the corporate elites have refused to come together and work together to educate and persuade. Instead, many seem to believe that the way to bring people to our side is to mock them mercilessly for being sucked in by a sophisticated, many-year, multi-billion dollar campaign to convince them that further building the fortunes of the rich is the only way any of the rest of us will ever be able to make a living–or draw a breath.
Those at the top levels of the blogosphere apparently see their ticket to the big time as refusing to unequivocally take a stand for issues that will help most of us and push, push, push for their beliefs.
I agree with vastleft that there is obviously some mechanism for opinion forming and enforcing at the top levels of the blogosphere. But what strikes me as so amazingly ironic is that this process is being employed by the same people who ranted and railed against the same process going on among Beltway policy makers and so-called journalists.
Maybe it gets back to the tribalism Arthur Silber talks about, but the need to be accepted by the next level of the in group appears to be immensely important to some people. Most people, maybe. I think I must have been born backwards, because I WANT new ideas, new ways of looking at things, but most people don’t. That’s why they stone to death prophets that are then praised by later generations.
Looks like there’s the bes and the wannabes in every single segment of society.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Carolyn Kay
Mandos,
Al Gore DID win in ’00.
The fact that he didn’t prevail is indicative of the very same illness we’re discussing here. A small minority of people who have put their money into a vast propaganda machine have made it lucrative to espouse their causes, and many have sold their souls to do so.
They have changed nothing less than the political map of the United States.
In my lifetime, I’ve watched the country go from the relative sanity of the Eisenhower years to where we are today, which is a government of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
zaguar
So the Progressive brand suffers from a disconnect between it’s strategists and it’s salesmen? I can only assume that you’ve tried, Ian, but as one of the most compelling, confident thinkers in the Progressive movement, I kind of expect you to contribute to crafting the policy positions we’re sold. If you disagree with… Jane Hamsher, for instance, why don’t you have an open dialogue, so that we, as reader’s, can better gauge what the best policy is and where our money and effort should go? Get in to it!
One soulful thing about the Progressive brand is that we can handle any level of pragmatism or populism we encounter. It’s not a movement based on one or the other. They should be working together.
DWCG
“Bipartisanship” and the “filibuster proof” are just excuses to make legislation more pro-corporate. Anyone who thinks different, just hasn’t been paying attention the last 11 months. None of this crap that is making it’s way through Congress requires a single Republican vote in either House or more than 50 DEMOCRATIC votes in the Senate. We could tell 9 Democratic Senators and Lieberman to go to hell on pretty much anything.
Reid, Pelosi and Obama won’t and continue hiding behind the false threshold, and the “progressive caucus” and CBC in the House continue to acknowledge it as a procedural hurdle, because they all need some excuse to continue watering down legislation, taking the corporate money, and failing to push the reforms the American people desire. The more progressives and the blogosphere recognize it, and fail to call Shenanigans! the longer the charade continues.
Regarding the lead post, the bigger problem is that Obama has tarnished the Democratic Party brand not only as pro-Wall Street, but unable to govern.
S Brennan
This is hogwash
“why don’t you have an open dialogue…One soulful thing about the Progressive brand is that we can handle any level of pragmatism or populism we encounter.”
As a person who has had comments scrubbed from many blogs because of my anti-Obama remarks…oh and yes, let’s not forget the viral/worm attacks, I can say if their is one thing the Pro-Obama crowd does not allow is open coherent discusion anymore that the blackshirts did.
Who I ask, takes things “off-the-table” more than the followers of Obama and the current Democratic leadership? Since the death of McCarthy, nobody has embaced the facist model as fully as the current Obama kool-aid crowd. Both in policy and the application of the policy the current Democratic leadership is a refutation of all liberal thought and practice.
The Raven
Brennan, viral/worm attacks? Wtf? You do know that those float around the net without any help at all?
Ian Welsh
Zaguar, I have disagreed with FDL’s stand for the public option. I have done so on this blog and at Open Left, and even sometimes at Crooks and Liars. I have also done so behind the scenes. I don’t have an account at FDL anymore and I am not a writer there anymore (indeed, I do not even have a commenter’s account) so I no longer have direct input to FDL.
Open Left, to their credit, while behind the public option hardcore, has been willing to let me write whatever I want and front page it at their shop. That’s something I give them major props for. Likewise Dave from Seeing the Forest is writing there now and I know he too has problems with the current health care bill(s).
Mandos: people who think that DKos is the only community that matters are quite mistaken. FDL, for one, is quite capable of generating a lot of calls and donations. Other blogs have their own constituencies. DKos is less powerful every year, because it generates less and less outward pressure every year. And in terms of influence, DKos is nothing special. Digby, for example, is far more influential than anyone at DKos, because everyone who anyone reads on the left, reads Digby.
Raw traffic, beyond a certain point, is not as significant as outsiders think it is.
S Brennan
I use three emails, one is professional, one private, one political.
All the attacks have come from the political ones, sure it could be cosmic coincidence, but given the Kool-Aid crowd’s use of the internet as an attack vehicle, it’s just as likely that those who would use vicious anonymous attacks against those that they politically disagreed with would use the same tactic with a new & improved twist.
In my above comment, suppression of speech is the current Democratic leadership’s preferred political MO.
As I said above:
“Who I ask, takes things “off-the-table” more than the followers of Obama and the current Democratic leadership? Since the death of McCarthy, nobody has embraced the fascist model as fully as the current Obama Kool-Aid crowd. Both in policy and the application of the policy the current Democratic leadership is a refutation of all liberal thought and practice.”
Carolyn Kay
>>everyone who anyone reads on the left, reads Digby
Well, I guess that’s why no one reads me. I stopped reading Digby when she refused to stand up to the Obama zealots during last year’s primary.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Tina
S Brennan: “Who I ask, takes things “off-the-table” more than the followers of Obama and the current Democratic leadership?
Leading Democrats on Sunday said they expect Congress to pass a major healthcare reform backed by President Barack Obama, but supporters may have to accept legislation that falls short on some issues. – Reuters
pretty soon there won’t be enough crumbs on the table to feed a mouse
ballgame
In general, I agree with most of your substantive points, Ian, but this post strikes me as a bit mean-spirited and even counter-productive. Wouldn’t it be more effective to point out that Obama and his fellow corporatists in Congress are not, in fact, progressive at all, rather than contribute to the sullying of the ‘progressive brand’ by implying that ‘they’ are failing us? In my view, the ‘they failed us’ meme jives a little too well with the aspirations of the Deranged Right Wing which is given the privileged status of ‘the Default Alternative to the Corporatist Democrats’ by the MSM for what I imagine are pretty obvious reasons to your readers.
I was uneasy about the public option proposal from the beginning because it wasn’t clear to me why it wouldn’t become the dumping ground for insurance companies who wanted to get rid of the costliest and sickest policy holders. But I don’t quite agree with the complaints against those who support it. Public option supporters’ reasoning — that single payer couldn’t pass (or that Obama wouldn’t support single payer), and that a well-implemented HC reform bill with a public option could tremendously expand coverage and help restrain profiteering — seems sound. It also seems to me that Hamsher worked extremely hard to push for a real public option, so I don’t think she can be blamed for the crippled public option that appears to be coming down the pike.
Now, do I think Obama should have gone with single payer instead of what we’re seeing now? Absolutely. Do I think he could have gotten single payer through if he’d pushed for it? That’s less clear. I do think the majority of Americans would ultimately have supported the effort, but whether that would have translated into a sufficient countervailing force against the corporate lobbyists patrolling Congress is a different question.
The Raven
Brennan, “All the attacks have come from the political ones.” Oh, I see. On the other hand, there are probably viruses that harvest addresses from all the posts on Obama boards. So put the tinfoil hat away, at least until you have substantive evidence.
S Brennan
Raven,
“but given the Kool-Aid crowd’s use of the internet as an attack vehicle, it’s just as likely that those who would use vicious anonymous attacks against those that they politically disagreed with would use the same tactic with a new & improved twist.
In my above comment, suppression of speech is the current Democratic leadership’s preferred political MO.
As I said above:
“Who I ask, takes things “off-the-table” more than the followers of Obama and the current Democratic leadership? Since the death of McCarthy, nobody has embraced the fascist model as fully as the current Obama Kool-Aid crowd. Both in policy and the application of the policy the current Democratic leadership is a refutation of all liberal thought and practice.”
sturgeon's law
“Wouldn’t it be more effective to point out that Obama and his fellow corporatists in Congress are not, in fact, progressive at all, rather than contribute to the sullying of the ‘progressive brand’ by implying that ‘they’ are failing us?”
This is very similar to what I hear from so many Republicans and conservatives which is that George W. Bush was never really a Republican or conservative.
sturgeon's law
Re: Atrios,
I agree that for the most part I listen to Atrios’ policy pronouncements, but he often suffers from logical fallacy and various biases.
Here he is today turning the fallacy of the excluded middle into a general shaming of parents, which is one of his perennial biases.
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/11/risks-we-tolerate.html
What’s worse is I think he’s smart enough to know exactly what he is doing.
ballgame
Bullshit. Republicans lionized Bush until late in his administration when he become so unpopular his political effectiveness was compromised beyond repair, and they wanted to dissociate themselves from the radioactive Bush/Cheney aura. They liked his cut-taxes-for-the-rich, shred-the-constitution, and wage-endless-war policies.
Conservatives, on the other hand, may have more of a point about Bush not being a true conservative, but I’m not familiar with conservatives who took a principled stance and repudiated Bush early in his tenure when he was popular. (However, my exposure to conservative media is minimal, so there may well have been principled conservatives who swam against the tide.) Obviously a great deal rides on one’s definition of “conservative.”
In contrast, I’m pointing out that Obama is not progressive based on his actions, not on whether those actions make him popular or not.
Your comment, sturgeon’s law, seems to be more along the lines of, ‘let’s do the right wing’s work for them and smear the progressive label.’
Carolyn Kay
ballgame,
John DiIulio, Kevin Phillips, and John Dean were all early and consistent critics of W.
I consider them among the handful of PRINCIPLED Republicans.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
ballgame
Carolyn: I’m not familiar with John DiIulio, but I agree with you about Phillips and Dean.
Carolyn Kay
John DiIulio was the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He only served a few months, and is the originator of the phrase “Mayberry Machiavellis”, referring to administration officials.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
DancingOpossum
Also, Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, and the folks at Antiwar.com and the American Conservative magazine. These were, and remain, principled conservatives who are equally irate with Obama as they were with Bush for the same reasons: Endless war, neocon policies, job-destroying free trade policies, and so on.
There were also isolated outbursts of anger at Bushian neglect during Katrina, from commentators at Fox News, but these were rare. The mass media in general swooned for Bush, and did the same for Obama.
Bob
“Now, do I think Obama should have gone with single payer instead of what we’re seeing now? Absolutely. Do I think he could have gotten single payer through if he’d pushed for it? That’s less clear.”
Not quite to the point, however. By taking single payer off the table early and absolutely, the Democrats put themselves in a position where any kind of public option automatically became the far left position to be attacked instead of a possible compromise.
Carolyn Kay
>>By taking single payer off the table early and absolutely
The Democrats have been playing this losing game for the last nine years. And Obama is one of the pack.
I’d love to play poker with these chumps. They’d show you their hand before the first bet is made.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com